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Yesterday was two days before the 2016 election, and Dave and I chose to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon volunteering for the Get Out the Vote effort. By nature, we are both Shy Persons who detest and avoid cold-calling and accosting strangers.

But we decided that desperate times call for crawling out of our comfort zone.

We were assigned to make the second pass through a South Tucson neighborhood that’s close to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Our trainer told us that each household included at least one potential voter who’s registered as a Democrat in the past, if not currently. She then offered snacks and water before handing us a binder containing data sheets, a map, and a script with friendly non-threatening language that stresses the importance of voting in general—and adds hopefully, “Can the Arizona Democratic Party count on your vote?”

Our data sheets listed individuals by name, age, address, gender, political party, and if they’re on the Pima County Early Voter list. Most were male and female Democrats, but some were listed as (O) for Other party or Other gender.

Our job was to indicate on the sheet if the person was “In Support,” “Against,” “Voted Already,” or “Not Home.” There’s room on the form to add comments like “This person has moved—,” “Person refused to talk to us—,” or “Large fierce dog prevented access.”

We spent three hours and knocked on about 30 doors. At around half the addresses, no one responded: Sometimes we concluded no one was home; other times, we were pretty sure someone was home but chose to not come to the door.

Here’s what else we noticed:

• The process wasn’t nearly as scary as two Shy Persons thought it would be, and it was actually kind of fun.

• Tucson has a remarkable number of small yappy dogs who take their jobs as four-legged doorbells very seriously.

• Many people have their televisions on in the middle of Sunday afternoon—whether they’re there or not.

• The voter rolls need to be updated: We were surprised by how many people had moved away.

• The friendliest, kindest, most courteous people were either Hispanic or Vietnamese (his wife was making egg rolls that smelled scrumptious): They all shook our hands, thanked us for what we were doing, and one even offered us water.

• We were particularly impressed by the woman who explained that her daughter-in-law, the potential voter, had just given birth that day—and could we come back another time? (We all agreed the voter might have more important things on her mind.)

• The crabbiest person was a twenty-something mom who said, “I don’t want to talk politics—“ and quickly closed the door. (Well, really, this year? Who could blame her?) Oh, and the man we could hear but didn’t see whose young niece told us: “He says to tell you ‘I don’t vote!’”

• All the kids who answered the doorbell—they ranged from about 3 to a young man who just turned 18 in September (and hadn’t registered to vote)—were unfailingly friendly and polite.

• One woman, age 43, said she hadn’t voted in a while and wondered when Election Day was …

• And then there was the potential voter’s teenage son who said: “My mom voted already. I know she didn’t vote for, umm, that guy—what’s his name? She voted for, umm, the other person …”

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore– And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over– like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

According to Delores Moore, Hughes was describing the deep frustration of the American blacks to racial prejudice in 1951 — and predicting the explosive future.

Six decades later, Langston Hughes’ poem is still relevant in a world where so many of us defer our dreams until later in life, thinking we’ll have more time, or more money, or more opportunity.

But for some, “later” never happens.

• A blast in the local fertilizer plant flattens half the town …

• A stroke fells the lover we once had …

• A garment factory collapses in Bangladesh, killing hundreds …

• Or celebrating a loved one’s marathon effort on a shining April afternoon explodes into a mass of shrapnel, blood, and shattered limbs…

For those of watching on the sidelines, can anything good emerge from such grief and pain? Can distant tragedies have the power to change the way we live our lives at home?

Maybe.

Maybe, either in honor or defiance, we can choose to give our dreams a chance — and not let them dry up, or fester, or stink.

What’s my dream? Writing the longform journalism stories that have been tugging at my sleeve for years — deferred because they’re unlikely to pay the bills.

I have no direct ties to Boston, nor do I know any of the dead or injured beyond the intimate and gruesome details we all saw. Yet, three weeks ago the Tsarnaev brothers changed the way I view my work.

I no longer send my creative time to the bottom of the list, to evenings and late nights, when my energy level has sagged.

Now writing comes first, re-assigned to my personal prime time, to those golden morning hours. It may seem like a trivial adjustment, a mere tweaking of the time clock. After all, I won’t be turning down paying assignments. But, to me, by giving these untold stories precedence over billable hours, I’m giving my writing dream a chance.

This past weekend was the 112th National Audubon Christmas Bird Count when tens of thousands of citizen scientists all over the country brave winter conditions to do a census of their local bird population. In my Chiricahua Mountain community of Portal, Arizona, it was the 38th annual count — and no courage was required with sunny skies, no wind, and temperatures in the 60s.

I’m — at best — a rookie birder, but I got to tag along on Reed Peter’s 2-mile territory that extended from his Cave Creek Ranch to Sunny Flats Campground at an elevation of about 5,000′. We saw a total of 41 species, including house finches, lesser goldfinches, white-breasted nuthatches, Gambel’s quail, many Mexican jays, along with canyon towhees, two red-naped sapsuckers, and lots of white-crowned sparrows. Most unusual was the arrival of a Scott’s Oriole on the ranch feeder!

My favorite bird is still the clownish acorn woodpecker — tragically, we arrived too late to rescue one from a passing Cooper’s hawk.

Sunday was the 37th annual Peloncillo count across the state line near Animas, New Mexico, and again I tagged along, this time with Reed Peters, Peg Abbott, of Naturalist Journeys, and a birder named Steve from Santa Fe. Wow — what a magnificent area! Our territory was a chunk of the Dunnegan Ranch, which is part of the 322,000-acre Nature Conservancy Gray Ranch, owned by the Animas Foundation and usually closed to the public. We traversed desert flats and sprawling grasslands, crossed clear flowing streams, scampered through narrow canyons, and crunched across oak/juniper woodlands. We recorded 46 species — and about 40 were ones we didn’t see in the higher elevations during yesterday’s count. Most of all, I learned that sparrows are HARD to identify! We saw hundreds of them, including Bairds, grasshopper, savannah, Brewers, white-crowned, black-throated, chipping, lark, and vespers.

Watching the prairie falcon skim over the grass tops, the roadrunner bask in the early morning sun on top of a juniper, and seeing a cloud of 100 mountain bluebirds descend into a nearby tree were sights I won’t soon forget.

Many thanks to the ever-patient Reed and Peg! I’m definitely hooked and hope to be more knowledgable this time next year when the next Christmas count rolls around…

Peg Abbott soaks up the view of grasslands stretching across the Gray Ranch toward the snow-capped Animas Mountains.

Considered by many to be the crown jewel of southern Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, Cave Creek Canyon now has a new friend — or, at last count, nearly 100 of them.

The Friends of Cave Creek Canyon (FoCCC) mission is

To inspire appreciation and understanding of the beauty, biodiversity and legacy of
Cave Creek Canyon.

To accomplish that goal, a year ago a small steering group began dealing with IRS paperwork and legalese in order to become an official 503(c) (3) Friends group. They also worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service employees of Coronado National Forest to find the best way for FoCCC volunteers to help support the USFS work and mission in Southeast Arizona.

Since getting established in September, the group has already
• set up a website and a Facebook page,
• teamed the Forest Service with local volunteers to establish benches in South Fork, clear VIsta Point, and maintain the Cave Creek Nature Trail,
• co-hosted a Portal-based Celtic Music weekend, and
• sponsored an educational forum with the Arizona Game and Fish Dept. to help landowners learn how to cope with the black bears in town following the Horseshoe 2 fire.

Hosted by the Chiricahua Desert Museum in Rodeo, N.M., forty-seven enthusiastic residents attended FoCCC’s first annual membership meeting, bringing offers to volunteer, along with discussion of many potential projects, including:
• adding an information kiosk at the opening of the canyon,
• replacing signs identifying some of the more noteworthy rock formations,
• photo-monitoring of regeneration after the fire that burned 230,000 acres,
• compiling a Biota Bibliographic project that would be a repository of links to scientific papers on the region,
• establishing an annual Bat Watch event, and
• providing hosts for the Visitor Center in order to keep it open longer.

“I couldn’t be happier with the way the meeting went,” said Reed Peters, FoCCC president. “The community certainly showed that Friends is something they care about and want to be involved in.”

Larry Pratt, Developed Recreation Project Manager for the Coronado, agreed. “I don’t live in this canyon, but my wife and I have been coming here for years,” he said after the meeting. “I’m very excited to see the formation of this Friends group and look forward to working with the members and seeing it succeed.”

It’s not often that I’ll rise before dawn and brave temperatures in the 30s with a howling wind … for a machine.

But what a machine! Steam Locomotive Engine No. 844 flew past the ghost town of Steins, N. M. at 8:15 this morning, welcomed by two dozen cold but enthusiastically waving train fans. The Union Pacific Heritage train was on its way to its first Arizona stop in Willcox and will arrive in Tucson for a display day on Friday. The New Mexico/Arizona Centennial Tour started in Cheyenne, Wyo., will last 32 days, and go through nine states.

No. 844 was the last steam locomotive built for United Pacific Railroad and was saved from being scrapped in 1960 to be held for special service.

And special it was – it’s been nearly 35 years since the U.S. Bicentennial when a steam locomotive last passed through the state.

To read more about it and to see an interactive map, check out the United Pacific website – from the warmth of your computer!

Not only did 5,500 people spend Friday and Saturday out in Saguaro National Park counting everything from fungi to water bears, but nearly 100 poets contributed poems to the cause as well.

The Poetic Inventory of Saguaro National Park was an additional part of the National Geographic BioBlitz 2011. Organized by poet and artist Eric Magrane, invited regional poets were given a choice of two Saguaro species as subjects. Some poets were filmed reading their poems, and the video loop was shown at the Red Hills Visitor Center during the weekend. Others were invited to read their work at the visitor center either Friday or Saturday. Poets could also add all or part of their poems to a Jaguar Biodiversity Quilt that will be travelling around the state and can also submit their work to a special issue of the literary journal Spiral Orb.

According to KOLD-TV, volunteers added 400 species to the biota of the park. Two stories of the event are here and here.

I was only there Saturday, but from what I saw, the whole event was beautifully organized, from the shuttle buses, to the informational tents, to the 24 hours of data-gathering, to the poetic inventory.

I was honored that my poem was chosen to close the Poetic Inventory:

Bobcat (Lynx rufus)

I push your wheelchair up the hill behind the nursing home to the palo verde’s lacy shade. You help lock the brakes, I settle on the curb, and we sit, talking quietly—almost like the lovers we werebefore the stroke blossomed through your brain, its branches snaking deep,snuffing neurons, dimming your bright youthful mind, leaving your left side limp dead weight.

As we fall silent, wrapped in the Rincon mountain vista and memories of shared hikes and backcountry trips, a lanky form with black tufted ear tips and stubby tail emerges from the urban trash-entangled desert, prickly pears festoonedin grocery bags, gravel strewn with old carpet pieces, fast-food cups, a discarded pail.

Ambling across the driveway, some hapless rodent swinginginertly from its jowls, the regal bobcat doesn’t deign to look our way. It strolls between parked cars, then nestles in among the lantana, its blotches blending into the building’s drab beige walls— and disappears.

Debbie and I met in Rodeo at 4: 30 a.m. and arrived in Bisbee around 6 with plenty of time to park, find our way around, and settle in at the Screaming Banshee to drink coffee while watching everyone else scramble for parking … perfect!

The event itself is easier than it sounds, at least if you start in the last “corral” with the walkers. We ran a few of the downhill streets, but walked up all the steps since there were so many folks ahead of us. What a fun and festive way to see Bisbee’s quirky backside: artsy railings (I particularly love the dragon), cheerful paint schemes, ceramics incorporated into rock walls, and it’s always interesting to see what other people plant in their back yards.

Musicians played and sang on most of the landings,hundreds of volunteers lined the route and handed out water, and even helped us remove the computerized chips from our shoelaces. After the run, which is closer to 4 miles than 5K, we rambled through the Artisans Market, enjoyed our well-earned beers, and headed back to the by-then packed Screaming Banshee for excellent pizza. I recommend the house-made fennel sausage/mozzarella/roasted onions/mushrooms/rosemary. Yuumm-m-m.

This was the 21st running of the Stair Climb, a benefit for Bisbee community development. According to the website, “Save Our Stairs, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization committed to playing a positive role in community development by providing & supporting initiatives that promote healthy, active living in Cochise County. We accomplish this through an annual fitness festival, the Bisbee 1000, The Great Stair Climb, partial proceeds of which are used to support healthy, active living programming in Bisbee, Cochise County and all of Arizona.”